> if the norms mean giving all of our tax dollars to NATO for nothing in return
We do not give our tax dollars to NATO, at least not in any meaningful way. NATO's entire budget as an organization is about $4B/year, which includes valuable shared command/control systems. For the most part, we fund the American military, and we commit to using it in concert with our allies in certain scenarios.
In exchange, we get incredibly valuable hard and soft power. We get access to land in Europe to use as bases, which are staging areas for potential worldwide threats (e.g., an imperialist Russia). We get shared intelligence. We get goodwill with the rest of the West, so that they'll join our trade pacts. We get commitments of Polish tanks and British spies and French manpower if there ever to be a hot war, so that the US can focus on what it does best (air and naval superiority).
But also, you're the only one who brought up NATO. There are myriad unrelated norms that Trump broke the first time around, and will certainly break further this time, that make the institution of "the American government" less able to serve its purpose. Norms like, a president can't pardon himself. A president can't use his position to direct foreign powers to patronize his own businesses. A president can't summon a violent mob to Washington to overturn an election. A president can't conspire with state legislatures and militias to disregard the results of their states' elections. A non-sitting president can't steal classified documents, and can't have ongoing secret communications with a foreign power. A president keeps special counsel at arm's reach. A president shouldn't use tax policy to explicitly punish states that don't vote for him.
Sabotaging the FBI's background check is absolutely without comparison. It was corrupt and inexcusable.
While yes, all presidents will tend to appoint justices they agree with, you cannot in good faith say that there is any comparison between Jackson and Sotomayor on the one hand, and Kavanaugh and Barrett on the other, in terms of qualifications to sit on the bench. And that's just at the Supreme Court level - the whole affair in Florida with Aileen Cannon is another level of obscene.
The "official acts" decision is completely without legal historical merit, and was made up out of whole cloth to allow Trump's appointees to protect him from any consequences from the judicial branch (remember that whole idea of three co-equal branches of government?). No other president has dared make so bold a claim, both because the idea that the Court should be subservient to the president is clearly at odds with how the American government has worked for almost its entire history, and because they didn't have personal crimes to cover up.
I do have a vendetta against Trump, but you have the cause and effect backwards. I don't think he's a bad president because I hate him, I hate him because I think he's a bad president who is dangerous to me personally, to the United States as an institution, and to the continuation of the human race. But perhaps even more than that, I hate him because he has enabled and legitimized pathetically transparent bad-faith arguments like this.